(18.04.2023) For some nations, the growing share of residents leaving the workforce presents challenges

morningstar.com (08.04.2023) A conservative estimate of 30,000 geriatricians will be needed to care for older adults by 2030, currently there is only about a quarter of that. This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org. The U.S. healthcare system must address the shortage of geriatricians -- and fast. The U.S. population is growing and aging, with an estimated 42% increase in those aged 65 and older between 2019 and 2034.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) in the United States of America launched its redesigned website, ssa.gov. The new site leveraged human-centered design concepts to build out self-service capabilities and improve accessibility. SSA analyzed customer data and conducted user research to inform where the gaps were, test designs and implement iterative changes on the site.

fao.org (2023) This article develops a conceptual framework on pathways through which non-contributory social protection can contribute to a resilient and inclusive agricultural growth in rural Africa. It draws insights from a review of rigorous empirical evidence on the impacts of cash transfers and multifaceted cash plus programs on range of relevant productive outcomes, including: accumulation of productive assets; inputs and farm management practices; off-farm labour and non-farm enterprises; and farm production and income. The review demonstrates an emerging consensus in the literature that access to social protection programs contributes positively to increasing the productive asset holdings of rural people, increased use of improved inputs and farm practices, and a shift away from casual wage labour arrangements. Moreover, there is limited evidence on heterogeneous effects across different baseline characteristics (income, sex, labor-constrained households, among others). Finally, the article highlights how social protection programs should be considered an integral part of broader rural and agricultural development strategies in order to achieve a more productive, resilient, and equitable rural transformation in rural Africa.

 IPS Journal (24.03.2023) Excessive reliance on algorithmic management has raised concerns regarding its opaque decision-making mechanisms and implication for workers

IPS Journal (21.01.2023) This year will be a crucial year for the platform economy. After the European Commission’s proposal on improving working conditions in platform work in December 2021 and long discussions in the European Parliament and Council in 2022, this year, the directive might be finally adopted – potentially impacting the lives of millions.

In the volatile and crisis-ridden European economic context, online work has grown in popularity through the adoption of technology that can help organise work, and manage and monitor workers. According to the ETUI report published in February, Juggling Online Gigs with Offline Jobs, online roles are more prevalent in European regions where there are very few opportunities to get into traditional jobs.

euobserver.com (08.03.2023) A new report published by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) highlights how platform work could be exacerbating inequality growing in the European labour market, and especially within member states themselves. Basically, it examined if regions with low availability of quality offline jobs led to more people taking more precarious online jobs. In the volatile and crisis-ridden European economic context, online work has grown in popularity through the adoption of technology that can help organise work, and manage and monitor workers. According to the ETUI report published in February, Juggling Online Gigs with Offline Jobs, online roles are more prevalent in European regions where there are very few opportunities to get into traditional jobs.

france24.com (24.03.2023) Talking Europe speaks to the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit. With anger growing in France about the government's push to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, and the EU facing an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, his portfolio is very much in the spotlight –  including recommendations to encourage a Minimum Income for all.

europeandatajournalism.eu (27.03.2023) Delivery, transport, but also business services: more and more workers are opting for self-employed status by using online platforms to obtain assignments. This is a common phenomenon throughout the European Union.

cnn.com (27.03.2023) Japanese authorities have widely promoted the term in the past decade to combat the country’s notoriously long working hours that have not only deprived workaholic fathers of family time and stay-home mothers of careers, but have helped drive the birth rate to one of the lowest in the world. To seize the “last chance to reverse” the situation, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week unveiled a raft of policies, including boosts to child support and a pledge to lift the number of male workers taking paternity leave from the current 14% to 50% by 2025, and 85% by 2030. But some in the world’s third-largest economy – which has long struggled with a falling fertility rate and an aging population – are skeptical the plan can really move the needle. Makoto Iwahashi, a member of POSSE, a labor union dedicated to younger workers, said while the government’s plan was well-intentioned, many Japanese men were simply too scared to take paternity leave due to potential repercussions from their employers.

openimis.org (20.03.2023) The World Bank, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) have announced an integrated new open-source software package to improve the management of social protection and health financing schemes in low- and middle-income countries.  The new software combines the openIMIS initiative, financed by Germany and Switzerland, with the World Bank`s digital platform CORE-MIS. It will serve as a digital public good and can manage a variety of schemes ranging from health insurance, employment injury insurance, voucher schemes to cash transfers and economic inclusion programs. The software will be available to governments at no cost.

ILO Working paper 87 (Feb 2023)  Human-centered social security administrations keep the human dimension in control of decision-making. This is made possible through the insight to be gained from digital data-driven innovation in policy and governance and managerial reforms. Moreover, there are risks associated with collecting and analysing people’s digital data analysed and using it to further automate business processes. Human centricity is examined in this paper, through a human + machine approach, starting with social policy through to service delivery. Machines using AI and related technologies are designed to aug¬ment rather than replace human decision-making capability. This augmentation approach is essential in matters where discretion, compassion, reasoning, judgement, and empathy are essential for equity, fair¬ness, and fiscal responsibility within social security administration. This working paper presents a series of vignette style case studies (13) as examples of digitisation and/or digitalisation in the context of human centricity in social security administration.

pensionpolicyinternational.com (14.03.2023) China is planning to raise its retirement age gradually and in phases to cope with the country’s rapidly aging population, the state-backed Global Times said on Tuesday, citing a senior expert from China’s Ministry of Human Resources. Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, said China was eyeing a “progressive, flexible and differentiated path to raising the retirement age”, meaning that it would be delayed initially by a few months, which would be subsequently increased. “People nearing retirement age will only have to delay retirement for several months,” the Global Times said, citing Jin. Young people may have to work a few years longer but will have a long adaptation and transition period, he said.

World Food Programme (27.02.2023) The study examines the barriers and opportunities to strengthening digital financial inclusion for cash transfer recipients in the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal. Specifically, it maps the existing evidence on the landscape of digital financial inclusion and cash transfer programmes in the region, and explores the perspectives and experiences of cash transfer recipients in receiving digital cash transfers. Based on this, it provides recommendations for humanitarian and development actors, governments and WFP to improve the realisation of digital financial inclusion through the digitisation of cash assistance.

A new web-based platform that provides easy access to cutting-edge employment policy expertise has been launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The Employment Policy Action Facility  (EPAF), is a comprehensive platform that brings together the ILO’s latest evidence, expertise and policy advice. It offers innovative tools, including a curated list of key resources relevant to different stages of the policy action process.

iadb.org (Feb 2023) Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the regions most exposed and vulnerable to climate-related risks, with large shocks occurring regularly. Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and variability of climate related extremes and increasing slow onset events, threatening social and economic outcomes in the region. Responding to climate change will require stronger risk management systems that include social protection. Social protection systems in LAC are relatively advanced, but they do not yet consider climate shocks. Overall, social protection systems suffer from relatively low coverage, leaving significant parts of the population vulnerable to transient and chronic poverty in the face of shocks. The large social protection responses that LAC implemented to address the impacts of COVID-19 present an opportunity to prepare for the challenges arising from increased climate-related shocks. This study investigates how non-contributory social protection (mainly income support) has been used to respond to previous climate-related shocks and to COVID-19, and what are the implications for managing climate-related shocks in the future.

worldbank.org (07.03.2023) Gender dynamics impact the way people are affected by disasters, including their capacity to withstand and recover from them.  For example, in Mozambique, prevailing social norms often drive women to stay close to their homes while men pick up employment outside the community. When a flood comes, women salvage belongings and try to live on what is available, which may mean relying on negative coping strategies such as reducing food intake and taking their children, especially girls, out of school to help with household income. Adaptive social protection (ASP) systems play a crucial role in reducing the need for negative coping strategies by increasing vulnerable populations’ resilience and access to economic opportunities.

The Japan Times (05.03.2023) China’s population decline, which the Chinese government officially confirmed in January, has led many observers to wonder if the country’s current demographic trends threaten its stability.

International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) (31.12.2022) Over the past 20 years, considerable progress has been made in reducing poverty worldwide, with the expansion of social protection coverage and uptake playing a key role. To strengthen and expand the public provision of social protection, countries have been investing in the development of robust delivery systems, including digital tools, especially identification and payment systems and social registries. This report discusses the potential of digital technology to improve social protection performance in rural areas, as well as its limitations.

wtwco.com (27.03.2023) Spain passes Europe’s first law requiring employers to give female employees leave to recover from severe menstrual pain.

fao.org (28.02.2023) In recent years, the social protection sector has made great strides in strengthening registries and information systems, in an effort to expand and improve the delivery of ben- efits and services to the diverse target populations it seeks to serve. At the same time, agriculture and allied sectors are increasingly making strategic use of digital technologies, data and digitally-enabled business models to transform agri-food systems, as a means of achieving food security and nutrition, as well as climate adaptation goals. One tool is the increasing use of farmer registries – as well as registries of those working in sectors such as fisheries and forestry – for supporting the development and delivery of tailored and differentiated policies to small-scale food producers and vulnerable rural populations. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the potential of data exchange between the information systems that serve the agricultural and social protection sectors. This paper builds on recent experiences across a range of countries to highlight how these two information systems can ‘speak’ to each other to maximise mutual benefits and enable better support to smallholder farmers and other groups.

ilo.org (01.03.2023) This second joint ILO-Unicef report on social protection for children outlines the devastating impact of a lack of social protection on child poverty, health, education, nutrition, child marriage and child labour.

European Social Policy Network (ESPN), europa.eu (31.01.2023) “Transparency” of social protection systems is essential for people's awareness of their rights and obligations concerning social protection and enables them to take informed decisions. It requires, in particular, that countries provide full information on social protection schemes, and also that they simplify, wherever needed and to the extent possible, access rules and administrative requirements linked to these schemes. This report explores the measures put in place by 35 European countries to improve the transparency of their social protection systems, focusing on the period January 2017 - April 2022. It shows the significant progress being made in the provision of digitalised, high-quality and easily accessible general and personalised information, partly accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis. In addition, the report explains that countries have simplified the rules, digitalised application procedures and streamlined administrative structures, with a view to ensuring a better flow of information. Nevertheless, several points are highlighted for further improvement, including: a) making access to information easier for the more vulnerable, for people with disabilities, and in certain cases for non-standard workers and the self-employed; b) simplifying complex rules governing application procedures, and promoting automatic granting of benefits; and c) evaluating regularly the transparency of policies and practices, including the consequences of digitalisation on access to information and the importance of bridging the “digital divide”.